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Show Page 295 Quorum of Twelve Apostles, Wilford Woodruff. The others were dead - Brigham, Heber, Orson Hyde - and he had known Mormonism before any of them. Orson announced quietly that it was fifty years to the day since he had joined the Church of Christ in Canaan, New York; to him, it was a double birthday, his sixty-ninth, and a year of jubilee for him personally as well as for the entire Church. When the meeting concluded, Woodruff rose and apologized for keeping the congregation a moment: "We are not in the habit of flattering any man, but I want to say a few words concerning Brother Pratt. If there is any man, dead or alive, who has dwelt longer in this church and kingdom than he has I do not know him. If there is any man that has travelled more miles in preaching the Gospel of Christ, in bearing testimony of the kingdom of God on the earth, I do not know who he is. When Brother Pratt embraced this Gospel, he was a boy, in one sense of the word illiterate and unlearned, the same as Joseph Smith...I never saw a man in my life that I know of that has spent as few moments idly as he has. I have never seen a storm at sea so heavy, even when shipping seas over the bow, side, and stern, but what he would read his book...He has improved his time...Brother Pratt was one of the earliest men who shouldered his knapsack and travelled through the American continent to preach the Gospel of Christ to this nation. Frequently he would suffer from ague all day and go along and preach his sermons at night...I feel to thank God that we can still hear his voice." 65 Everyone dispersed and at four o'clock there was a happy gathering at Juliaet's residence in the Seventeenth Ward. Nearly seventy of his children and grandchildren surrounded him. A few close to him were not present - his son Laron, "the oldest of the children in the Church," read the birthday tribute. Orson Junior was not there. Laron's encomium ranked his father with the patriarchs and prophets of old, lauded the purity of his well-spent life, and led the others in a resounding, "GOD BLESS YOU, FATHER!" Orson's youngest, Ruby, who was only six years old, joined another sister in a piano recital; there was violin music and a vaulting hymn from the voice of the President of the Twelve, John T"'inr. Milando Pratt presented Orson with a large family record of six |